Tv Land
 

Okay, I know the best playback viewing monitor is one of the bajillion- thousand
-dollar Sony NTSC boxes or the like.

But let's take it down a notch---what would be
the BEST AVAILABLE in the CONSUMER arena? -- for near accuracy of color, res, etc.

imagine you could only shop at a place like
Best Buy or Circuit City...what would you get
to put in your edit area or in your field setup?

flat TV? portable DVD screen? standalone
computer flat panel? other?

(and keep in mind- you're also supporting
a wife, five kids, and three grandmothers----
I only have ONE of these, but remember,
we're imagining)

Re: Tv Land
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Scott Moore : flat TV? portable DVD screen? standalone computer flat panel? -->>>

Flat panel screens will have prices approaching that of an NTSC monitor, so unless you have some other reason to want one I don't think this will save much money. For a low cost approach look for any TV with s-video input. Quite a few of the inexpensive ones are starting to appear with this feature these days. I have a 19" Apex flat screen CRT with s-video that cost under $200 a couple years ago. Quality is OK but not exceptional.

I have had a variety of Sony WEGA TV's. The 27" is very nice, 19" is OK and for awhile I had a 13" that was terrible and it didn't even have s-video in. It also died young. If you're looking for a small TV I'd suggest buying mostly on price because none of them seem to be that great in terms of quality.

I use a Sony 17" 16:9 1280x768 flat panel to edit my widescreen video. It works very well and also doubles as a computer monitor. But this wouldn't really be a "budget" solution, cost is around $700.

You might not want to limit yourself to Cicuit City, take a look at the monitors from B&H. There are some that are pretty inexpensive and are probably better than any of the consumer TV's...

You can buy the 'Industrial' Monitors that are sold by JVC for aorund $250-$350. Quite good and a significant step up from a consumer television.

I agree with Mike, look at the Panasonic or JVC Industrial monitors. I actually prefer the look of the Panasonic to the JVC, but I'm splitting hairs. Sony has production monitors also, but they're in the $500 range.

So JVC or Panasonic Industrial monitors...
 

Could you guys be so kind as to
direct me 'where' to find these?
(on the net or otherwise)

thanks

Use the link in my signature and go to our sponsor page. Several of our sponsors will carry several monitors in your range.

Okay, a question from me tinged with the usual naiveness...one needs an additional video card to use two monitors, right? Are they easy to install? Do you have any recommended brand/version?

A second video card will work. Or you can buy a dual-head video card as I have. I have a Matrox 440 in this computer and an Radeon 9600 Pro in my main editing computer. Both support two monitors.

Thanks, Mike!

The other way to drive the monitor is sending firewire (1394) to your camcorder or some other device that will transcode it to video. In many cases this will be better than a card in the computer (although on the Mac I sometimes hook up a monitor my Radeon 7000, or to the s-video port on my PowerBook). But I get the best results using a DVD recorder that takes 1394 in and transcodes to component video.

I have a AG-DV2000 Panasonic editing deck; how would you integrate this unit into a multi-monitor setup?

I also use a DV2000. I run two LCD monitors from the G4 GeForce card, and have a Panasonic CT-1386 monitor hooked up to the video output of the DV2000 (through a 1X12 Dist Amp.). The LCDs are used for editing and the Panasonic is used to view the final output, color balancing, etc.

usually the best setup is computer --> firewire --> deck (or camcorder) --> S-video/component/composite/analog --> NTSC monitor (or TV). This way you get to see what will be recorded onto your master.

On a not really related matter, you can hook up two computer monitors to your editing system so you have more workspace.
Video cards with 2 outputs will do it. You can go on newegg.com (one of the best places to get computer stuff) and look at the pictures. White usually means DVI (for LCD) and blue for VGA. If the card comes with a DVI-VGA adapter, that implies the card can output a VGA signal on the DVI output (with DVI+VGA outputs, the card can do 2XVGA). Very basic dual monitor video cards at newegg.com cost around $35-45 (various radeon 7000s and GeForce 4s).